Every build runs on a fresh virtual machine which is not shared with other builds and the state of which is not preserved between consequent builds. After the build is finished its virtual machine is decommissioned.

Hyper-V

Google Compute Engine

Google Compute Engine (GCE) cloud is a secondary build cloud running in Google Cloud “Central US” zone. Builds are routed to GCE cloud when they use a custom build worker image not available on Hyper-V cloud. GCE cloud is also used as a failover solution for Hyper-V cloud.

It usually takes a build around 3-4 minutes to start on GCE environment as this is the time required to provision and boot up build virtual machine.

Private build cloud

There might be build scenarios that cannot be covered by AppVeyor build workers. For example, some proprietary software should be pre-installed to support your builds or you need more powerful build VMs or private network access.

AppVeyor allows running builds on your own cloud:

Hyper-V server (on-premise or hosted)

Docker server (on-premise or hosted)

Azure virtual machines

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Google Compute Engine (GCE)

In this scenario AppVeyor service provides UI, orchestration, artifacts storage and NuGet feeds while AppVeyor build agents run on your virtual machines. Private build clouds are available to customers with Premium plan and can be enabled upon request. Please let us know if you are interested.

IP addresses

Build worker images

Build worker image is a template used to provision a virtual machine for your build. Physical implementation of the template depends on the build cloud platform and can be a master VHD for Hyper-V and Azure, snapshot or image for GCE or AWS.

Image updates

Before rolling out an image update we perform its extensive testing. However, not all usage scenarios can be covered by our automated tests and sometimes even a smallest change in the image can break someone’s build. If that happened - no worries - you’re covered! We provide an access to “last good” versions of build worker images from previous update:

Previous Visual Studio 2013

Previous Visual Studio 2015

Previous Visual Studio 2017

You can use those images to unblock your builds while we are working together with you to understand the root cause and do a fix by the next image update.